


Clash

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23976583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: An AU in which Charles arrives before Frank leaves; they have a difference of opinion.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 5
Kudos: 34





	Clash

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Im_writing_out_of_time for helping me solve the ending!

Hawkeye’s brilliant eyes felt like they were going to eject themselves from his skull and bounce off of the canvas sides of the tent. He shook BJ’s shoulder. “Are you hearing this?”

Beej held a finger to his lips. “I  _ will  _ if you keep quiet.”

Hawkeye never could keep quiet. “It’s like something out of the Wild West!”

No guns had been unholstered, but the two men did stand in boots (army, not cowboy) on packed earth under a blazing sun. The residents of the Swamp tuned back in to the exchange, wondering if they’d be called on to exercise their surgical skills on a fellow doctor before the day was done.

Winchester’s voice was as cold and dangerous as a rearing cobra, hood flared. “You will leave off this road, Major, starting today.” 

Hawkeye believed that the phrase “sniveling coward” had practically been invented for Frank Burns and all the weasels of his make and caliber, but this time Frank didn’t back down. Maybe it was because he knew they had an audience. Maybe he held fast simply because he was cornered. Whatever the reason, Burns was right up in Winchester’s face. 

“This isn’t Harvard Yard, chum,” he shot back, syllables loaded with contempt. “You haven’t got the authority to give  me  an order.”

Hawkeye and BJ saw Winchester rock back on his heels and cross his arms. “Last chance.” The words crackled in the dry air like lightning. They weren’t even directed at him, but Hawk flinched anyway. A voice that could sound that pleasant, that certain, in the middle of a fight, was a voice that was accustomed to being obeyed. 

“You just got here!” Frank burst out. You don’t know how this place works! And I outrank you!” 

“You are my superior in neither rank nor manner,” Charles said coldly. “Now, will you leave off?” 

BJ stage whispered to Hawk, “Or shall I make you?”

Hawkeye shook his head, laughing. “No way. Chuckles is  _ not  _ a brawler.” For one thing, the man was a surgeon; he wouldn’t want to damage his hands. For another, Charles practically dripped refinement; fisticuffs were sure to be beneath him. 

Lifting a man by his shirt collar, however...

BJ’s breath escaped in a happy whoosh. “Hawk, I think I’m going to kiss him.”

“After me! After me! Look at that snake squirm!!” 

Burns did, pulling his neck in like a turtle; he was ranting now, screaming about unfair treatment and a court martial. Charles was immoveable as a wall of ice, cooly waiting until he was done screeching, eyes seemingly calved from a glacier. “Major Burns, are you quite finished?” he asked at last. 

“Yes.”

“And you are finished, also, for the short remainder of your time here, with mistreating enlisted men?” 

“Yes.”

He lowered the man and dusted his hands off as though they were tainted. “Good day, Major.”

Spontaneous applause rocked the camp. 

***

That night, Colonel Potter came to share a drink with the Swamp rats. He winced at the first blast of the homemade stuff, but appreciated the way it got the inner fires burning nice and warm. 

“Heard there was something of a dustup at the OK Corral today,” he said at last. 

Hawkeye and BJ took on the look of kids on Christmas morning. 

“It was heavenly,” BJ enthused. 

“We’d weave Charles a crown of laurels if we could tell which plants here  _ don’t  _ leave you with a rash,” Hawkeye added. He gave the Colonel a suspicious look. “You didn’t hear the commotion in your office?”

“I’m long in the tooth and white-whiskered about the muzzle, Pierce, but I’m not deaf. I heard Winchester as loud and clear as you did.”

“Why didn’t you put a stop to it, then?”

“Oh, a good commander knows when to give a horse its head and when to tug at the bit. Winchester’s new here - and unhappy - no sense digging spurs into his sensitive sides over this.” All of this was delivered with a thoughtful air, but then he grinned. “And Frank more than needed a good kick in the can!”

All three men roared with laughter.

Then Potter leaned in, conspiratorial in the orange light put out by the stove. “I’ll bet I have a piece of the story that you fellows are lacking, though. Got it right from Radar.”

They perked up. Boredom was the base property of the 4077th; gossip was a prime form of recreation (and the officers were dilettantes next to the enlisted men).

“Spill,” BJ said, threatening to do just that as he refreshed their drinks.

Potter held up a finger. “On one condition. The two of you _cannot_ \- and that’s with a capital C - cannot use what I’m about to say to torment Winchester.”

He chuckled at their disbelieving and too-innocent faces. “Oh, I know, he’s the toast of the town tonight. But the cold will come again and you’ll be stuck together and getting on one another’s nerves. Or he’ll one up you in the ER. Every one of you surgeons has a personality the size and strength of a team of dray horses - you’re bound to beef sometimes. That being said, this next bit is off limits. Today, tomorrow, and if we’re unlucky enough to still be here, next year. Got it?”

“Got it,” they agreed meekly.

“Good. Now where was I?”

They groaned at this show of faux senility but knew that whatever they were about to hear was bound to be good. Potter was only dragging his feet to heighten their enjoyment.

At last he said, “Hold on to your hats, fellas.”

Pierce and Hunnicutt made a show of tamping down invisible bowlers as he’d known they would, winning a white, toothy grin from the commander; those two always cracked him up.

“What do you think today’s ruckus was all about?”

They hadn’t expected this rhetorical turn; confusion screwed up their faces.

“Burns being a grade-A chicken-fried rat,” Hawk said at last.

BJ nodded to second him. “Everyone knows he’s hell on non-coms.”

“Agreed. And the three of us have stepped in more than once to keep him off their backs. But you two have lived with Winchester. The man’s a snob. You’d almost expect him to agree with Burns about keeping people in their places.”

“The only people I expect to agree with Burns are lobotomy patients,” said Pierce.

“Charles is educated, too,” BJ seconded. “There’s a strain of social Darwinism in there, sure, but I don’t think he sees the men as literal stepping stones the way Frank has been known to do.”

“Fair enough, fair enough. But what if I told you that this is not about men - but  _man_? Singular.”

They shared a look, gripped by and delighted with the riddle.

Seeing they were stumped, the Colonel offered a hint. “Though when I say _man_ , I’m saying it in a  broad  sense. This wasp-waisted fellow  has  been known to wear a skirt, complete with petticoats and frills... or so I’ve heard.”

Their delighted cries threatened to lift the tent from its pegs. “Klinger!?!”

Hunnicutt was the more disbelieving of the two. “I’m sorry, Colonel, but one more time. Slowly. Charles Emerson Winchester III went to bat for our beloved cross-dressing Corporal?”

“The very same.”

Hawkeye made shushing gestures at BJ. “Details, Colonel! We need the details!”

A natural born storyteller who loved being the center of attention, Potter was delighted to run through the particulars; it was a good dress rehearsal for the letter he planned to write to Mildred. “Well, you both know how rough Burns is on Klinger.”

They nodded. Usually, Klinger just responded to Burns’ remarks with a snappy comeback that left the Major looking foolish.

“Well, this time,” he lowered his voice practically to a whisper, “ _Burns made him_ _cry_ .” 

He could see that they didn’t believe him. “Got it from Radar.”

“That’s better than getting it from the horse’s mouth,” BJ agreed.

“What did Burns do?” This came from Hawkeye; crusader that he was, he wanted to know if Frank’s humiliation had been payment enough for his trespass.

“Well, if Radar is to believed, the couturier Corporal was debuting a new look.”

“I know he’s been working on evening wear,” said Hunnicutt. “Peg sent him some patterns.”

“They have similar dimensions,” Hawkeye joked.

BJ swatted at him.

“Be that as it may, this new ensemble received a big thumbs down from Burns. He told Klinger he looked like a Toledo tramp.”

Knowing how much Klinger loved his hometown, Hawkeye and BJ shared a look.

“Talk about hitting a guy where he lives!” said Pierce with a scowl.

“ I  have personally danced with Klinger at more than one party,” BJ added. “He’s a perfect lady with classic taste. We should wash Burns’ mouth out with soap.”

“Just so,” Potter agreed. “Though I’ll bet Burns will be pretty scarce until his transfer, thanks to Winchester.” He held up a glass. “To our boy from Boston.”

“To the man Potter poached,” Hawkeye seconded.

“To the snobby shadow Frank now fears,” BJ finished them out.

Minds and tongues thoroughly lubricated, they turned, then, to speculation.

“But why?” BJ was the one to ask.

“Why what?” Hawkeye emerged from a lazy perusal of a nudist magazine that Potter was pretending not to ogle along with him.

“Why would Charles do anything for Klinger?”

“ _ We  _ would,” Hawkeye pointed out.

Everyone nodded at that.

“But,” the Colonel’s voice was starting to show the effects of 80 proof gin. “He’s not us.”

It was sound logic.

“Maybe he just hates Frank,” BJ suggested.

“ _ We  _ hate Frank,” said Hawkeye.

“But he’s not us,” BJ offered.

“May...maybe the Major liked that little evening number Klinger created.”Potter hiccoughed. “Radar said it was a head turner. I like the black one myself - the one with the fan. Courted a girl in France who knew how to say a whole lot just by changing the way she held her fan.”

Hawkeye and BJ cracked up; they loved the Colonel’s stories on conquest in the heady days of the Great War... even if they suspected that most were fabrications.

“I confess myself partial to Klinger in white,” said Hawkeye. “Or anything with saddle shoes. When he shows up in them I want to carry his schoolbooks... if he had any.”

“I only have eyes for Peg,” BJ began, “but the man’s a knockout in pink. Or that cherry hat.”

“The cherry hat!” They all exclaimed together as a toast.

“But he’s not us,” Hawkeye said after they drank. “So maybe it wasn’t the hat?”

The mystery kept pace with the gin until all three men were snoring off a solid drunk. Coming in from rounds, their unseen hero rolled his cornflower eyes, muttered “Cretins,” under his breath, and fell into his cot.

***

Knowing that drawing attention to his unlikely defender would only make Charles sore with him, Klinger spent the next few days trying to come up with a way to say thank you. Just as Potter had heard about what resided at the heart of Winchester’s motivation through Radar, Klinger had gone to his buddy in the clerk’s office to get the scoop on the Winchester-Burns dust up. When Radar told him that his tears had triggered the confrontation, he could have been bowled over at the touch of a feather.

For all of his schemes, Klinger was, at heart, an honorable creature. He couldn’t let a good deed pass unremarked. He got his chance to say thank you one morning before reveille. Charles was stretching his legs; Klinger was feeding Radar’s menagerie to let the clerk get some extra shut-eye. Radar did his best to ensure Klinger’s frequent orders of clothing arrived intact, so Klinger figured he owed him one. Shutting the last cage door, Klinger hurried to match his stride to that of the longer-legged Major.

Without noticing it, Winchester adjusted his stride so that they fell in together. “Morning, Corporal.”

Klinger smiled to hear he’d left off “good;” there were very few good mornings in wartime Korea. Knowing he only had a small window, Klinger got right to the point. “I wanted to say thanks, Major, for the way you stood up for me.”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“You don’t have to worry about it, though, really. I can handle Major Burns. The other day - well, that’s about as bad as he gets and I’ve been through it before. I can take it.”

Charles stopped and faced him in the golden light. His face was open, soft. “I never questioned whether you _could_ , Corporal. But you shouldn’t have to. And now you won’t.”

_ Because you’re here now _ , Klinger thought. Then something happened that had never happened to him the entire time he’d been overseas: Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger found himself looking forward to what was coming next. Winchester was here. Burns was shipping out. A new surgeon. A new era.

And the shelf in his head that held schemes now had a new goal, right next to “get a section 8.” It was “get Major Winchester to look at me like that again. As much as possible.” He was smiling as he walked toward the center of camp. Walking at his side, Charles caught a glimpse of his glittery shoes and painted toenails and smiled too. 

End! 


End file.
